Wednesday 14 January 2015

Optical Illusion 2

A few weeks ago I posted about this project here. In the meantime I've been working pretty solidly on it. Ten days ago it looked like this:

progress to 2 January

Now we're here:

progress to 14 January
The ten strips on the left are stitched together, as are the four on the far right and the four very narrow strips in the middle. The other two are hot from the needle and they will be attached tomorrow morning before I start on the last three strips.

In my first Optical Illusion post I showed the sewing area. Not much has changed, except there are even more little pieces of fabric floating around. However I did have to make some changes in the fabric organisation in the form of eight pasta-sauce pots, labeled with the number of the colour on the swatch chart.

sewing set up
As I'm working with ten colours (four shades of yellow, five of green and one purple) some of which are very close together in value, I was constantly checking that I really did have the colour I wanted in my hand. All the fabric strips that I have cut are now kept sorted, and only once have I dipped into the wrong sauce-pot! Isn't unpicking paper piecing the devil of a job? This is a very time consuming process as I'm cutting each piece separately as I go, and thinking", "There must be an easier way!".

Some of the pieces are only about one third of an inch wide which makes sewing straight difficult, one side of the foot being higher than the other

Trying to sew a straight seam
when the seam allowance is almost as wide as the whole piece.
I hope I will have finished the top by the beginning of next week. Then quilting. How would you quilt this one?

I'm linking up to:

Let's be Social at Sew Fresh Quilts
WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

The links are in my right-hand side bar so go and have a look at what others are sharing today.

Happy sewing

Marly.

18 comments:

Unknown said...

Hallo Marly, wat ziet dit er mooi en strak uit. Het optisch effect is heel duidelijk. Ik zou alleen in de naden stikken. Zou een deel van de illusie verdwijnen als je op de vlakken quilt?

Sicces Maartje

Lucy said...

wow.... your optical illusion looks amazing......

Lisa J. said...

Wow Marly: This looks intense but fun. Can't wait to see it when it's finished.

Vireya said...

Wow! It looks fantastic! I can't think of an easier way, because your pieces are all different sizes. But it looks like it will be worth all the work in the long run!

molly b quilts said...

This looks so cool! I can't wait to see it finished.

Sue C said...

Your quilt is coming along nicely and looks AWESOME. I think the quilting should be minimal so as not to detract from the illusion effect.
Oh yeah, I am also very jealous of your fab quilting space!

Dasha said...

Looking great Marly!

MegsAnn said...

What a cool quilt! Thanks for sharing your organization process. It's always good to hear how other artists are keeping things straight. www.quiltartbymegan.com

Jayne said...

Its going to be an amazing quilt! Love it!

Jasmine said...

This looks neat! And I can't imagine sewing pieces that tiny. Have you seen how some people quilt Bargello quilts? They quilt diagonally through each piece to emphasize the movement. Just an idea.

Anonymous said...

Wow, this is going to be fabulous!!

ittehgaps said...

Check out the book Convergence quilts or one on Bargello quilts for easier ways to deal with your super narrow strip sets. Love optical illusion art. Cindy

Quilting Stories said...

Very interesting and beautiful top!

molly b quilts said...

Also, what about quilting it in the ditch? That may be kind of boring normally, but here I think that would emphasize the cool effect you've got going on. Whatever you choose, I'm sure it'll look cool.

Judy@Quilt Paradigm said...

Marly, it is looking fantastic! I was doing some searching for ideas for black and white quilts and happened upon this one http://addictedtoquilts.blogspot.com/2012/02/black-and-white-quilt.html this might give you some quilting ideas. Also, what about a spiral? A square spiral would look awesome . . . IMHO :)

Val's Quilting Studio said...

I loved seeing your sewing space. I like how your table has so much room! (And of course your projects are looking great!)

Nancy said...

Your quilt will be lovely. I am glad I could go to the link where you talked about starting it.

Val's Quilting Studio said...

Also....that design is soooooo cool!